Trump, California tiff over a sanctuary cities mirage

Published 4:46 pm, Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Photo: JIM WILSON /NYT

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Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown (left), with Xavier Becerra, the state’s attorney general, reacts to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ immigration lawsuit announcement last week. Claiming that liberal politicians were endangering citizens and obstructing federal law, Sessions announced the Trump administration was suing the state over its so-called sanctuary laws. Sessions is hardly the right person to defend the supremacy of the federal government. less

Immigration has always made President Donald Trump a wee bit loony. No rational person would say the United States is hurt by accepting risk-takers from “shithole” countries, paint immigrants as violent criminals and claim that Mexico is sending us its worst people. Just to scare up a few votes?

But now, the issue seems to have finally driven him and his entire administration stark raving mad.

How else can we explain the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided to sue the state of California over a phony “sanctuary” law that only has the power to offend conservatives and make liberals feel morally superior?

Sessions is not the right person to defend the supremacy of the federal government. Here you have a career politician who hails from Alabama, which seceded from the union in the 1860s and defied federal civil rights laws in the 1960s. Here you have someone who sides with gun zealots who think they have the duty to overthrow a tyrannical federal government, and who thinks local police departments accused of civil rights violations should escape federal oversight.

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The head of the powerful National Rifle Association in the United States has slammed advocates of gun control, accusing some of exploiting last week's school shooting in Florida.
Wayne LaPierre blasted "opportunists" and "European-style socialists" in America, accusing the NRA's critics of waiting "not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain".
More than a week on from the atrocity that left 17 people dead, Donald Trump went the furthest he has ever gone on suggesting reforms on gun control.
However, the president reiterated his idea of arming some teachers, first raised on Wednesday, and suggested they be paid a bonus. It has drawn a mixed reaction in a country fiercely divided over how to curb mass shootings and everyday gun violence.
The National Rifle Assocation (NRA) heavily backed Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. On Thursday its chief accused Democratic "elites" and the media of politicising the latest mass shooting in an attempt to fight gun rights.
"The elites don't care not one whit about America's school system and school children," NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre told the audience of conservatives near Washington. "Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms."
The US Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms. The organisation has blamed the failure of school security, the shooter's family, the FBI and the US mental health system for the Florida attack.
At the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the organisation portrayed itself as the true protector of the country's schoolchildren.It's offered free training to those who want to bear arms to protect schools.
"We must immediately harden our schools. Every day young children are being dropped off at schools that are virtually wide open soft targets for anyone bent on mass murder. It should not be easier for a mad man to shoot up a school than a bank or a jewellery store or some Hollywood gala," LaPierre said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer condemned LaPierre's comments and said the NRA was "once again spewing pathetic, out of touch ideas, blaming everything but guns".
President Trump gave his support to the National Rifle Association. He said he had been in touch with the politically influential gun lobby about his ideas to stem gun violence in schools, and called the group "Great American Patriots".
The NRA had been defending itself after this week's youth-led protests up and down the country.
After meeting with survivors of last week's school shooting, Trump discussed new measures with state and local officials at the White House.
"We're going to do strong background checks, we're going to work on getting the age (from which to be abke to buy guns) up to 21 instead of 18, we're getting rid of the bump stocks and we're going to be focusing very strongly on mental health, because here's the case of mental health," the president said.
The rampage on February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was the latest in a series of deadly shootings at American schools and has spurred unprecedented youth-led protests in cities across the country. Many of the teenagers and their parents taking part have called for more curbs on guns.

Media: Euronews

It’s absurd. To make sense of it all, keep in mind the three F’s: foil, fraud, and flip.

Foil: With a modern-day P.T. Barnum at the helm, the Trump administration has a knack for finding a sucker every minute by creating a foil so as to deflect attention away from whatever is going wrong — a fractured and backbiting White House in chaos, a looming trade war over 19th century-style tariffs, the resignation of top advisers, questions about payoffs to a porn star, etc. During the campaign, amid a cascade of gaffes and scandals, Trump shifted the conversation to trade and made a foil out of China. A few weeks ago, when the topic was school safety, Trump pointed his finger at violent movies and video games. Now that the subject has turned to immigration, the convenient foil is California.

Fraud: When railing against so-called sanctuaries, the administration keeps contradicting itself. One minute, it says that California is preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from doing their jobs; the next, it announces with great fanfare that it’s business as usual and that raids are on the way. So much for not being able to do their jobs, eh? No matter who declares what, the federal government doesn’t take orders from local and state officials in California. But nor do local officials like Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff — whom Sessions called out for spilling the beans about an ICE raid — take orders from the federal government. By the way, not for nothing, but Republicans like Sessions have for decades gone to Central California to milk contributions from conservative farmers who would lose everything and see their crops rot on the vine without illegal immigrant laborers to pick them.

Flip: Remember when conservatives ranted and raved about local control? When local school officials wanted to skirt federal education accountability requirements under No Child Left Behind, or a local county clerk declared that her Christian beliefs prohibited her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, or the state of Arizona insisted that it had the right to deputize its local and state law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law, who did all these people go to for support? The Republican Party, that’s who. In all those cases, and too many others to mention, conservatives argued for states’ rights and local autonomy. Where did those people go?

Think about the spectacle on the left coast, and how surreal it has become.

California Gov. Jerry Brown says the administration has declared “war” against his state. And what exactly are we going to war over? A con job. A mirage. A so-called sanctuary that offers no safe harbor.

In the new California, as in the old one, local police still cooperate with ICE agents, who still have access to prisoners in jail. People still get deported. Very little has changed.

But those are facts, and politics has no interest in facts. People will believe what they want to believe.

On behalf of the Golden State, this carnival act of an administration had better believe this: We’ll see you in court.